Not too long ago, on July 7, I blogged about the preliminary design for the long-awaited Two Tabor Center tower at 17th and Larimer, planned by the Tabor Center’s new owners, Callahan Capital Partners. Over the past few months since Callahan announced their intentions to move forward with Two Tabor, they’ve provided just a square footage and floor count range for the new tower. The first design rendering from July 7 looked to be about 30 stories. Since then, not only have I been hearing rumors that Callahan was leaning more towards a 750,000 SF, 37-story version instead, but also a commenter to the July 7 blog who works for Callahan confirmed that the tower would be taller than the 30-story One Tabor Center.
Callahan has recently updated their corporate website‘s section on Two Tabor Center with new renderings and project details, and I’m happy to report that the rumors were true! How does a 38-story tower sound? The roofline design has also changed and Two Tabor will not have a flat top! Here are a bunch of new renderings and elevations from their website, which I’m pleased to share with you here:
View from near 17th and Lawrence:
View from across the intersection of 17th and Larimer:
17th Street elevation:
16th Street elevation (note the curved façade that will face One Tabor’s curved façade):
Larimer Street elevation:
Lawrence Street elevation:
The tower will have a total of 750,000 SF, 20,000 SF (approx.) average floorplates, and will be LEED certified. The greenish-blue glass will infuse a nice dose of color into a part of Downtown that has a lot of brown, beige, and silver-colored towers.
Now let’s see if Callahan can get Two Tabor Center under construction before the year’s end as originally promised. One nice thing about this site: no big hole to dig and subterranean levels to build. Just rip off that medal cladding covering the elevator core and go vertical!
The Larimer Street side of Two Tabor, unfortunately, continues as the “blank wall” side, but with the remaining three-quarters of the Larimer block face already that way from the original 1980s construction, I guess I’m not too surprised by that. Hopefully, the 17th Street and plaza (Lawrence) sides will have good pedestrian-active uses. The plaza generally has a fair amount of people coming and going during the day, but few people seem to linger there–no doubt because there’s nothing to do there. I hope Callahan has a ground-floor restaurant planned for Two Tabor, with outdoor patio seating spilling out onto the plaza. That, along with some new benches, public art, landscaping, and maybe a vendor kiosk or two would greatly help enliven that space and make it a vital pedestrian activity center. Doing so would be consistent, after all, with the newly adopted Downtown Area Plan. I hope Callahan has that in their plans.
